But 10 years ago, I could have said the opposite. 10 years ago or even 5, you use to get rewarded for player killing. Most recently, it's more about roleplaying and adventuring. Content doesn't necessarily have to be focused around new areas, it can also be focused around class changes, new classes, new races and so on. Think of it as expansions or add ons to the base game. Edges did that, new areas did that, new classes, class revamps to have more viability, cabal shifts and so forth. If the game was all about PK, why would there exist a place specifically for RP, the Eternal Star.
When people have long lived characters, and talk about their adventures, there might be a line about you were tough, or I seemed to have your number in PK, but what stands out most is, "I really loved interacting with you, your character was awesome and well thought out" In what I feel is in the majority of PBF's. Right now CF I feel is in a state of retention and not so much a state of advertising and recruiting new players. Once the game retains people more often, then the small gains here and there will be more meaningful, how to do this is figuring out the hard part because even with such a limited playerbase, there are people who play the game for different reasons.
Playing the game how you enjoy it is what makes it great, but some people enjoy PK, some enjoy RP, and some enjoy exploration. How this would be good is if instead of punishing for one thing or another, you build on the enjoyment of these points that CF does best. Reward players who enjoy PK and perhaps do it well like throw in a bit of con when they see someone reckless but enjoying their character. People who like to explore and share information, give them benefits to doing that i.e, gnome warrior wants to be a dragon slayer, he slays black and red dragon, then midnight and red-gold, give him dragonslayer edge for free instead of making him pay for it when there's only a specific benefit he'd be limited too. RP well, and enjoy doing it, maybe give/show ways they can RP better.
Punishing players for something they enjoy will not keep players and while there are a few power houses who rock at PK, they got penalized when EP stopped counting for them for when they were killers who distended. They penalized explorers and observers, people who enjoyed going around and finding new things about old places, which I still do to this day. Make it enjoyable and enhance the fun, don't punish is all I'm saying.
